Navigating 3D spaces on a computer differs from program to program, game to game.
Games such as the sims, use the right button to traverse the space, the middle button to change the angle of the camera. Alternatively, the age old WASD is also used to traverse the space and now applies to software like Blender, because though it is traditionally for moving a character around a space, the user just knows that WASD means move.
Planet Coaster, Cities Skylines, even Figma also use a pretty similar variation of it. It builds a knowledge in our head of how to traverse any 3D space on a computer, thus making it simpler to navigate because of our prior knowledge.
Cinema 4D uses this, however requires the command button to be pressed down. It was a key thing I struggled with whilst using the software, the controls differed to what I knew and so interupted my workflow.
These controls are generally used quite universally and so feel simple, but only for people who have the prior knowledge to use these controls.
It is interesting to see different types of control manuals within video games, every game differs ever so slightly, but sticks to the main principles of what the user knows to be the norm. The norm is so sedimented into our brains that to play a game that doesn't conform to these controls becomes arduous and clunky. Even the the idea that someone is better at playing a game on a PC than a console is borne from our pre-existing knowledge of controls.
For example, the Sims 4, on default settings uses a different camera navigation to the Sims 3.
Because its not what I know, I change the settings everytime to the sims 3 style camera. The fact alone that there is a setting to change the controls back to what we know in itself shows the magnitude game cameras have.
However, everyone I know who plays the game without having played the Sims 3, or many PC based video games, finds it incredibly difficult to use the old controls that the sims 3, alongside other games like Rollercoaster Tycoon and OpenTTD helped to make so habitual.
So is knowledge simpler? Or is it just whatever we’re used to?
